


As We Go Along

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [194]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crushes, Living Together, M/M, Pining, Stepsiblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 02:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16777729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: “Recent studies show I hate everything.”Thor didn’t bother to look up from his phone. “Stop being so melodramatic, Loki.”





	As We Go Along

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Recent studies show I hate everything. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

“Recent studies show I hate everything.”

Thor didn’t bother to look up from his phone. “Stop being so melodramatic, Loki.”

Loki sniffed and flopped back in the armchair, his arms and legs spread akimbo, his eyes turned towards an unseeing and apparently unfeeling God. “I’m just telling you how I feel, Thor. Maybe you should try it sometime.”

A snort. “I have better things to do than whine. As do you. Don’t you have a take-home midterm due this week?”

“Ugh,” Loki said. “Don’t remind me. It’s the only thing in this damned apartment more boring than you.”

There were a nudge at his knee then, a poke of Thor’s long, bony foot. “The damned apartment that you begged to move into, you mean? Oh, yes. Poor Lolo. Stuck having his rent paid by his soft-hearted oaf of a brother. How do you stand it, you poor, fragile thing?”

Loki shot Thor the bird and sat up with a huff. “I could pay my half, you know, if you let me drop out and get a decent job, you know.”

“Not a chance,” Thor said, breezy, his eyes still stuck on his screen. “I’ve herded your ass through college this far; you think I’m gonna let you bounce out with one semester left? Not a chance, kid.”

“Don’t call me kid.”

“Then stop acting like one and go do your fucking homework.”

Loki had a satisfying stomp off to his bedroom and slammed the old rickety door, glared at his laptop and the textbooks spread all over his bed. He’d come out a half hour before in search of a sandwich and a pleasant distraction from the lives of Tudors and what’d he discovered instead? A grouch of a stepbrother and a distinct lack of fresh fucking bread. And still his test was only half done. God, he thought, perching in a snit on the bed, Thor was such a goddamn pedant. Why Loki hadn’t moved out ages ago, he didn’t know, but hell, at times like this, he wished that he had.

Oh, he was grateful, of course he was, for Thor taking him in. 18 he’d been and brimming over with resentment at their parents’ spectacular lack of interest in his life. They were self-absorbed assholes--it had always been thus--but it was only when he’d graduated from high school with no plan, no job, no conversation with them about college that he’d realized how little of a damn they gave about him. It wasn’t malicious or borne out of some kind of personal animus; it was more like there was nobody in the world as interesting as each other, his mom and his stepdad, and once he didn’t have school to eat up his every waking moment, it was impossible to ignore.

So he’d called Thor in the city and begged, called Thor in the city and whined, called Thor in the city and spun a fantastical tale of all the shit he wanted to do with his life--all the shit he would do, Boy Scout honest, if Thor would just let him move in so he could get out and start being the most interesting human he could be.

Eventually Thor had said yes, but with conditions: Loki had to go to college, had to promise not to party, had to set his studies ahead of all else. 

“Yes,” Loki had said then, gripping the phone tight to his ear, butterflies spread through his insides. “Yes, I will. Of course.”

But, truth be told, he hadn’t thought Thor was serious. Or that his stepbrother would take enforcing those rules quite so seriously.

“You can’t  _ ground  _ me,” he’d spit the first time he’d bombed a test, the first time Thor had taken away his phone. “I’m not a child! Who the hell do you think you are?”

“The one who pays for this,” Thor had said calmly, his eyes a smooth ocean even as Loki saw red. “The one who’s going to stop paying for it until you get your head back in the game.”

Loki remembered the look on his face, the way Thor’s calm had only fed Loki’s fury. “God, you’re a dick. Have you always been this much of a dick?”

“Yes. I just never had to be one to you. You used to be a good kid, remember?”

“No.”

“Well.” Thor’d given him a half smile and shoved the phone in his pocket. “I do.”

Now, Loki glared at the gaping pages spread over his sheets, the messy crumple of papers huddled around his laptop. Three and a half years of this shit and his patience was fried. Maybe his last nerve, too. 

Being around Thor tended to have that effect, though. Having a stepbrother who was so sweetly stubborn was infuriating enough; having one--living with one--who walked around shirtless and was built like a steamboat and who was so painfully pretty it hurt, that was a whole other level of nerve-trying.

It wasn’t like he’d never noticed it before, how gorgeous Thor was; how his body tended to sit up and take notes. He’d been 14 when their parents had married and Thor had been 18 and the first time they’d met had been the morning of in the back of the church and Thor had been decked out in a neat, perfect tux and one fold of his hand around Loki’s, one sunny, genuine smile, and Loki’s heart had been in quicksand, sinking in a hot rush. All his trepidations about the wedding--about Odin’s temper, his argumentative nature, his ability to block out the rest of the world from Loki’s mom--had slipped away in that moment as Thor gave an easy squeeze to his hand.

“I’ve never had a little brother,” Thor had said, teeth white behind his scraggly college beard, “just so you know. I have no idea what to do.”

“I’ve never had a brother at all,” Loki had said, words tumbling out in a rush. “Like, big or small. Either.”

Thor had let his hand go and patted his shoulder. Handed over another dazzling smile. “Well then, I guess we’ll have to figure it out as we go along, huh?”

“Yeah,” Loki’d said, his cheeks turning treacherous red. “We can do that.”


End file.
